Roast fillet of beef with red wine sauce and sweet potatoes

Rather than serve this with normal potatoes, I like to do this with sweet potatoes. They add a distinctly non-European flavour to what is essentially a very European dish and also match well to the sauce. You can also add mushroom tarts as another sidedish, as we did on 4th March.

Serves 10 as a main course

For the beef:

1 whole beef fillet (1.8 - 2kg), trimmed of fat and sinew

a few sprigs of thyme

4 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced

olive oil

salt and pepper

For the sauce:

400ml good red wine (not vintage, but not plonk either)

a jar of red onion marmelade

1 tbsp thyme leaves

For the sweet potatoes:

5 large sweet potatoes

a hefty glug of olive oil

A few hours in advance, or the day before, mix the thyme and garlic together with the olive oil and some salt and pepper and massage into the meat, getting right into the crevices. Seal in a ziplock bag and refrigerate. (You might want to cut the fillet into two pieces if you haven't got a large griddle or oven.)

Put the thyme leaves in a small saucepan with the red wine and simmer gently until reduced by about half. Add the onion marmelade, taste and season. You will probably find it needs a fair bit of salt. Leave to cool.

About an hour before you're ready to eat, heat the oven to 220°C. Get a griddle pan really hot and sear the meat all over. Move it to a roasting tin and roast for 30 minutes (for medium-rare meat), then remove from the oven, wrap in foil and leave to rest for 20 minutes.

Whilst the meat is roasting, peel the sweet potatoes and cut into chunks. Steam for 10 minutes until tender.

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium/high heat and add the sweet potatoes. Let them cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned and crisped in places. Scatter with coarse salt.

Reheat the sauce.

Unwrap the meat and carve into 10 thick slices. Spoon over the sauce and serve the sweet potatoes alongside.